La Capitana-class
The La Capitana-class Battleship was the first Spanish capital ship to be commisioned in several decades. Primarily ordered to try and project a strong Spanish Republic, it ultmately backfired as Rebels used their construction as an example of wasteful spending on grand military warships instead of focusing on the people. However, this would not prevent Franco from himself moving forward with the battleships completion after the war. Due to a lack of modern ship building expirence, the British lended much of their support to the design of the La Capitana class. In fact, a La Capitana esque design would go on to be one of the preliminary designs for what would eventually become the British Lion-class The La Capitana would have machinary largely provided by Britain and America, which would be supplied before Franco would eventually come into power. The eventual armament would be composed of 3 Triple turrets of BL 14 in (360 mm) Mark VII guns from the British KGV-class. The Engine Machinary would be based off the boilers and turbines used in the KGV-class, which when mildly modified provided the La Capitana with 150000SHP. When commisioned, the La Capitana would be one the fastest battleship, with a top speed of 31kn. The La Capitana was regarded as mildly underarmored overall. The armoring scheme left the bow and stern largely unarmored. In fact, overall the La Capitana's relative lack of armor was its Achilles heel however. The armoring thickness was the same thickness as the Scharnhorst, which is referred to as a Battlecruiser. However, the lack of armor was required to meet the tonnage requirements of the Washington Treaty. Even though it was later found out that the La Capitana in reality had a weight of 37,000 tonnes. The largest issue impacting the La Capitana, that between the time they were ordered, and the time they were commisioned, warship design had progressed significantly as more and more countries completely disregarded Naval treatys. After Santa Anna would be commisioned in 1940, and the Nazi invasion of France, Spain had decided to come to the aid of Germany and join the war. Throughout the war, the La Capitana were used as Commerce Raiders, and constantly patroled the Western Mediterranean, trying to limit Allied warships access to the Mediteranean. With the sinking of the Bismarck in 1940, the Germans looked to her design for a potential fast battleship of similar role. (It was ultimately decided that it was an unfit ship for the role.) By 1943, the combined totals of their efforts had resulted in the sinking of several enemy warships, and millions of tonns of merchant commerece. However, with Allies at Spain's front door, Spain surrendered in 1945. The ships were later escorted to Scapa Flow, where she was reflagged under a Free Spain flag as much of the La Capitana shared her design with the KGV-class Design The La Capitana was a sleek warship, drawing inspiration from several various sources. The La Capitana was long, with a relatively low but elongated superstructure. The Superstructure had a very rectangular bridge, where as the rest would be very similar to other British Warships. She would have 2 funnels, inbetween which would be a cut for Aviation facilities. Ships in Class: * La Capitana * Santsima Trinidad * San Martin Category:Spanish Navy Category:Battleship